Ships and Trucks Rarely Meet

Here is a relatively rare event in Australia, not many truckies have to do this on a day-to-day basis, back a truck onto a ferry. In the trucking industry ships and trucks rarely meet at close quarters. In this video the V8 Supercars team, Brad Jones Racing’s B-double transporter backs into his berth on the ferry for Tasmania.

The Tassie ferry is relatively easy to handle being flat and wide. Other ferries are a little less straightforward like this one, the, expensive, Kangaroo Island ferry which sails from Victor Harbour in South Australia. The trucks have to reverse down a steepish slope onto a ramp and up onto the ferry. There is always a danger of grounding the T-bar and rough weather can make it even more problematic.

Similar issues are repeated around the world as we see from this video of a truck reversing onto a small ferry as it leaves the Orkney Islands, off the North Coast of Scotland:

A more sophisticated set-up in a ferry handling trucks crossing the English Channel, between England and France has a lift to bring trucks up to a second floor parking area:

There’s no reversing trucks on the ferry between the North and South Islands in New Zealand, they just drive them on and spin them around inside: